Groundhog GDIME
by annafan
Summary: Charlize has read all the fanfics, she knows all the tricks... All she has to do is follow the tried and tested methods for falling into Middle Earth, and she'll get the elven prince of her dreams. And if at first you don't succeed, try, try again... and again... and again. Not a Legomance (but not for want of trying on Charlize's part).
1. Lost in the caves

**Chapter 1: In which our heroine gets lost in some caves.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Lord of the Rings, just in case you thought for some weird reason that I did.**

**As anyone who's waded through my previous fic knows, I like playing things for laughs. But I've had a couple of ideas for (shock, horror) serious fics which I'm going to try to play straight. So I need an outlet for my tendency to silliness, and this fic is it. Any time I feel the need to joke around, I can write another chapter of this, thus leaving me free to explore post battle traumatic stress and doomed love elsewhere.**

**Any resemblance to any real Legomances out there is of course entirely non-accidental. Because, let's face it, the bad ones outnumber the (very few) good ones about 10 to 1! (Which is not to say that there aren't the occasional very good ones which are a joy to read – but, my goodness, they're rarer than hen's teeth).**

I've often wondered how Charlize and I ended up as friends. I'm quiet, maybe even a bit nerdy, keep my head down, work hard at school, manage to get okay marks, nothing spectacular, but good enough. Charlize on the other hand. Well, she's the archetypical wild child. The cool kid – in fact, the too-cool-for-school kid. She's pretty, and a bit flaky, but kind and funny. Mostly she lives in a world of her own imagination. And a lot of the time, that world is Middle Earth. She's wildly in love with Legolas, of course. Film version, naturally. I don't think she's actually read the books.

The day our, or rather, her story started, we were in a double maths lesson. Charlize hated maths lessons. She hated them even more than she hated English, History, Business Studies, IT. In fact she hated them almost as much as she hated sports lessons. And sport was something that really sucked, in her opinion. All that getting hot and sweaty. It made her hair lank. Her face went red and unattractive. There was the ever-present risk of breaking a nail. Eww. Viewed that way, maybe maths wasn't so bad. At least she could stare out the window.

So stare out the window she did. In the distance, on the edge of the school field (scene of aforementioned pink and sweaty humiliation and nail-breaking incidents) was a stand of trees. I felt as though I could read her mind. It wasn't hard to guess that the trees were being woven into her favourite fantasy, the one in which she was a beautiful wood elf with violet eyes and waist-length golden curls. (Yes, I have pointed out to her that no-one has violet eyes. No, it hasn't made a difference. She just says what's the point of having a fantasy unless you make it a good one). And a flowing, figure-hugging dress of soft white silk with a silver girdle – Charlize devotes endless amounts of time to thinking about the clothes she might wear. Personally I go for whatever's on top of the heap in my drawer and looks like it isn't too crumpled. But of course, today we were in school, so neither of us looked our best, in shapeless polyester school trousers and crumpled white shirts and a tie of a hideous and peculiarly vivid green – one fashion issue we do agree on is that we both look terrible in school uniform.

Charlize has told me about her fantasy so many times I feel like I could tell the story myself. It's the one in which her amazing martial arts skills save the day time and time again, and earn her first the respect, then the undying devotion and love of Legolas Greenleaf. Needless to say, Charlize has not realised that Greenleaf simply is the English translation of Legolas. And of course, given her attitude to sports, she doesn't actually possess any martial arts skills either. But I digress.

Back in the classroom, her reverie was abruptly and annoyingly interrupted.

"Miss Jones, would you care to tell us whether we should use the sine or cosine of the angle to solve this particular problem?"

I could see Charlize reassessing her list of most hated lessons. Suddenly, maths went back up into the number one spot, ousting the hated PE lessons, no matter how hot and sweaty they made her. I surreptitiously scribbled 'sine' on the back of my notebook just as Charlize said "Cosine." The wrath of Mrs Stone descended on her, scarier than the legions of Sauron before the black gate. Extra homework was duly awarded.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Given the extra homework, I was a bit surprised when, 10 minutes after I got back from school, Charlize called. Though thinking about it, I probably shouldn't have been. She'd probably cobble something together during register next morning. Charlize was not one for letting something as mundane as homework cramp her style. However, her next words really were cause for surprise on any understanding of the word: she suggested a bike ride in the country. Charlize, who never does any exercise, whose idea of a hobby is trawling round endless (and I mean endless) clothes shops in Manchester city centre on a Saturday.

"Where to?" I asked, thinking we'd probably go as far as the local park where she'd hang out eyeing up the lads on the skateboard park while I died of boredom.

"Alderley Edge," she replied.

"Come off it Charlize, quit messing. That's a good 6 or 7 miles each way and you hate cycling."

"No, it'll be fun. The weather's nice, it won't get dark for hours yet, we can go and explore the caves..."

"You... caves … dark... mud … spiders," I said, then did my best computer-voice imitation, "_Does – not – compute."_

"No, seriously, I've got a brilliant idea. But I need to go to Alderley Edge to put the plan into action."

And that's how I found myself trundling along the Cheshire lanes, past fields of cows and expensive houses with footballers' flashy cars parked outside them, while Charlize puffed and panted and sweated on a naff pink bike that she'd outgrown a few years back but hadn't been bothered enough to replace. While we cycled, she explained the plan. Even by Charlize's mad-cap standards, this one was outstanding. Outstandingly dumb, that is.

I knew she read loads of fan fiction. She particularly loved those 100,000 word plus, multi-chapter epics where someone with violet eyes, wearing a floaty white silk dress (yup, that's right, it wasn't even her own imagination that concocted her favourite maths-lesson-fantasy) fell into Middle Earth, fell out with Legolas (because every Legomance needs a bit of ramping up of sexual tension), saved his life in battle and eventually married him. I have to admit I love them too, albeit for rather different reasons. There's something hypnotically addictive about the bad spelling, atrocious grammar and general crimes against the English language. They make Dan Brown look like Joseph Conrad. And that's before you get to the hilarious anachronisms. I mean, the books are modelled on a Saxon and Medieval world (with a side order of Roman architecture in Gondor and Norse mythology), and yet some of these writers have zip fasteners, electric light switches and bras (I'm still looking for brain bleach to erase my memories of the scenes involving the removal of ye genuine olde worlde Medieval brassieres).

But she'd really lost the plot this time (assuming there had ever been much of a plot there in the first place, which generally there wasn't). She thought that by recreating some of the opening scenarios for girl-drops-into-Middle-Earth stories, she'd actually manage to get there herself. Totally crazy. And the one she favoured for today's little adventure was that good old standby, "Girl gets lost in caves and wanders around until eventually she stumbles across the Fellowship and realises she's in the Mines of Moria, by which time she's so frightened, in a bravely-trying-to-hide-her-fear-while-biting-her-l ip-endearingly sort of way that Legolas just has to hold her in his arms and soothe her to sleep."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

It was about 5.30 when we finally got to the Edge, that peculiar, wooded, beached whale of sandstone outcrop rising above the otherwise flat Cheshire Plain. We cycled through the village of Alderley and then set off up the road that runs up the slightly gentler slope round the back of the hill.

I waited half an hour at the top of the Edge while Charlize wheeled her bike up the road. I'd suggested taking the path straight up through the woods, but Charlize had voted that too steep even to push her bike along. We padlocked our bikes by the style, and hopped over a style onto one of the myriad paths that threaded their way round the top of the Edge. I knew my way around pretty well; I quite often cycled out this way with my brother, and had been mucking around there since childhood. Many of our games involved elves and dwarfs, but not Tolkien's (my spelling of 'dwarfs' may have tipped you off); in our games, we wriggled through caves and pretended we'd rescued the Weirdstone of Brisingamen and were going to raise Arthur's sleeping army of Knights to ward off the forces of evil in our world, not Middle Earth. But we'd grown out of those games a few years earlier. However, the layout of the top of the Edge was still clear in my mind. We emerged from the fringes of the sparse trees on its flat top, and onto the red sandstone outcrop above the scarp slope. Slithering down the sandy path, we crossed under the cliff and found the most impressive of the cave systems. I say 'most impressive' because this particular cave had a large entrance, though in fact the tunnels didn't penetrate that far into the hillside.

Charlize produced a torch from her bag.

"Stay here, Sophie. I need to do this on my own." I interpreted this to mean "Even though you're geeky and nowhere near as pretty as I am, there is no way I'm risking Legolas falling for the wrong girl." She switched the torch on and set off down the sandy slope into the mouth of the cave, disappearing round a corner into the darkness of the left of the two tunnels. I settled down with a book (by an odd coincidence, another of Alan Garner's, only set in Wales this time – _The Owl Service_) and waited.

After three quarters of an hour I started to feel a bit worried. After an hour, I decided I had to do something. I got my own torch out and started to explore. My brother and I had been down this particular set of caves when we were younger. I knew that all the tunnels led to dead ends, so I searched them systematically, starting with the left hand one which I'd seen Charlize go down. To my surprise, she wasn't there. I felt a bit unsettled, scared even, but told myself that there had to be a rational explanation. I'd been so absorbed in my book, perhaps I'd not noticed her emerge from one and go off to explore another. I set off down the other tunnel, one hand running down the dusty, cold sandstone wall as I went, the other holding the torch. It didn't take long for me to reach the end of the tunnel. A blank wall of red rock greeted me. No sign of Charlize here either.

I was starting to get really scared now. Where the hell had she gone? I turned to make my way out. I'd have to call the police, get the cave rescue out. Perhaps she'd sneaked past me and gone looking elsewhere on the Edge, for a more extensive cave system. Some of them were quite large, with hidden sink holes and drops she could have got trapped in. And at the back of my mind was the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, her madcap scheme had worked. Surely it couldn't have. Maybe I was going as crazy as she was. I had a vision of myself, standing awkwardly in front of a police officer and Charlize's parents, trying to explain that she'd gone to Middle Earth because she had a crush on a fictional elf.

Just as I reached the entrance, a piercing scream rent the silence. It came from the left-hand tunnel, the one I'd explored first, the one that had been empty moments earlier. My heart started to race and my mouth went dry with fear. My instincts told me to run like crazy, but gathering what little courage I had, I went back down the tunnel, the beam from the torch dancing around like mad as my hand shook. I turned the corner, and almost fell over Charlize. She was unconscious on the ground. Running from her cheek to her jawbone was a set of scratches, which looked as though they'd been made by fingernails. I knelt beside her. As I knelt to feel for a pulse, terrified that I might not find one, she gave a loud groan and her eyes flickered open.

"Oh god, that was awful. Get me home..."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

It took me ages to worm the story out of Charlize. Eventually she told me. (I had to promise to let her copy my maths homework for the next month).

She had stumbled down the tunnel. Unlike the real tunnel in our world, this one went on for a long time, several hundred yards. Suddenly she came out into a brightly lit hall, torches hanging from sconces. The hall was filled with the sound of voices and merrymaking. She realised that the merrymakers were in fact dwarves. Delighted by the apparent success of her plan and spurred on by the prospect of meeting her beloved elven prince, she strode up to the dais at the top of the hall where what she presumed was the dwarf king sat in state with his highest courtiers.

"My lord king," she said, sweeping a low curtsey. She paused, surprised to find her voice a little deeper and hoarser than normal. Perhaps the dust in the tunnels. She coughed in an attempt to clear her voice, then continued, "I am a stranger, come to your world by the grace of the Valar." (Yes, that sounded convincing, never heard that line before). "Would you, of your courtesy, do me the honour of telling me where I am, and what year this is?" (Getting into the swing of things now, any moment now, she'd start adding 'eth' to the end of words completely at random).

"My Lady, you are in the Hall of the Mountain King beneath the Lonely Mountain, in the year 3018 of the Third Age."

"What month? I must know whether I am in time to get to Rivendell in time for Lord Elrond's council," Charlize said, her voice still sounding strangely husky. She looked up at the dwarf. Strange, in her fantasies she had always looked down on him, her elegant elven stature lending an imposing gravitas to her appearance. Maybe the dais was higher than she thought.

"It is the month of June. You may, if you wish, travel in the company of Gimli son of Gloin, who goes to the council on behalf of our people." (Yeah, right, she drops in from nowhere, but the King's going to send her off to a top secret meeting in Rivendell, no questions asked...) The King continued, "A Lady as beautiful, as clearly virtuous, as supremely wise and benevolent as yourself should not travel the northern wilds alone."

"Why, your majesty, you are too kind..." Charlize simpered.

"But surely you must realise how beautiful you are, beautiful beyond compare. Your eyes, of a gem-like violet, the like of which I have never seen before. Your hair, like the purest spun gold. Your skin, so delicate and glowing, like blossom under the light of the moon."

Charlize felt a blush rise to her cheeks. The King continued, "And the lusciousness, the luxuriance, the exquisite softness of your beard..."

Charlize's hand flew to her chin. Sure enough, it sprouted an amazing, thick, bushy growth of hair. Suddenly it all fell into place – her hoarse, deep voice, her stature. She was a dwarf. With a shriek, she fainted.

**Coming up next: Chapter 2, in which our heroine falls from a horse...**

**I hope I don't offend any writers of Legomances. After all, I've written a Legomance (only a couple of chapters left to go). One in which Galadriel has an i-pad. And Legolas gets to remove a bra (having first had an argument to ramp up the sexual tension). And I get a joke about an MPreg to run and run way beyond the point at which any sane writer would have changed the subject. So hopefully you'll forgive me on the grounds that I'm prepared to send myself up along with everyone else. **

**You all know the drill... if you like it, write a review. Then I'll know whether to bother with some more chapters.**


	2. Washing Day

**Chapter 2: Washing Day, or, why it's a really bad idea not to pay attention to matters of strict canon.**

**Disclaimer: I don't anything to do with Lord of the Rings.**

**Okay, I know I promised you horses. But I was watching Horrible Histories on CBBC with my little boy this morning, and one of its facts about the "Measly Middle Ages" set this running in my mind, and it wouldn't go away.**

We scrounged a lift from Charlize's dad. He dropped us off in the car park at his golf club and we wandered down the path to the river bank. I had my suspicions that Charlize was up to something. She had a rucksack – an unusual choice – she'd normally have said something along the lines of "rucksack are for dorks." What's more, it was a very full one. I desperately wanted to ask her, but I knew her well enough to know that she'd clam up and sulk if I pushed things, so I followed her along the path.

I wonder what images "river" conjures up for you? Are you envisaging a sparkling torrent, splashing between moss and boulders, shaded by willows and rowan trees? I suppose by the standards of suburban Manchester, what we had was a pretty bucolic scene – lots of trees and grassy fields. But, frankly, the aesthetic standards of suburban Manchester are pretty low. I have to admit that the Mersey is a very brown,very muddy river, and it does smell a bit. It doesn't so much sparkle as ooze slowly and lazily, as if it can't be bothered to make too much effort in its progress towards the sea. In fact, if it could talk, it would probably say something along the lines of "Am I bovvered?" And by this stage in the Mersey's life, you're downstream of Stockport. Which really doesn't bear thinking about too closely. To add to the ambience, over in the distance, we could see the flyover for the M60 and hear the constant rumbling of traffic. After about 400 yards or so, Charlize broke the silence.

"Here," she said, swinging the rucksack off her back, "Your turn with the rucksack." Funnily enough, she never offered to take it back. A mile and a half later, following the hairpin bends of the river, she suddenly paused. We were on the outside of the meander at this point on the path, and there was a collection of large boulders, dotted along the edge of the water.

"I think this will do," said Charlize, and disppeared into the bushes the other side of the path. "Keep a look out." I heard the zip on the bag, then a rustling, another sound of a zip, a bit more rustling. Then Charlize appeared, resplendent (if that's the right word) in a floaty white dress. I think I recognized it from Primark's window display from last weekend's trip to the Trafford Centre. (Please, never make me go to the Trafford Centre again. I'd sooner have my wisdom teeth out without anaesthetic).

I couldn't restrain myself any longer, but I tried to keep my voice casual. "So, what's the plan."

"Well, I'm going to get in the water...," Charlize began.

"Are you sure?" I squeaked. "The Mersey isn't exactly the cleanest river ever."

"No pain, no gain. Anyway, I get into the river, then float downstream until it turns into the the Bruinduin..."

I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing. "Make up your mind – it's either the Bruinen near Rivendell or the Anduin – the Great River."

"I can't stand it when you get all nit-picky." Charlize actually pouted. She continued in a whiny voice, "This really matters to me. It IS the Bruinduin, I'm sure I remember the films right. I've seen them loads more time than you." She glared at me, then started to wade out into the water. She gave a very loud squeal as the cold water swirled round her legs, then gritted her teeth and launched forward into the brown murk. After a few strokes, she reached the middle of the stream and rolled onto her back. Mud stained Primark, now there's a fashion statement you don't see very often. Her floating body started to drift gently downstream.

"See you back at the golf club in half an hour or so..." I yelled. I had no idea whether she could hear me. I had a quick look in the rucksack. Jeans and t-shirt, towel, perfume (good call), ah, pay dirt. A bar of chocolate. I settled down on the grass with the chocolate and my book. By yet another of those weird quirks of fate, I'd chosen appropriately. I'd stuffed our Eng Lit set text in my pocket. I started to read: "Call me Ishmael..."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Charlize drifted on the current, the cold seeping into her body. Maybe this hadn't been the best way into Middle Earth. But she was dead set on floating like Ophelia (albeit without the drowning in a fit of madness bit) so that as she rounded the bend (Freudian slip there, I think) Legolas would see her from his vantage point in one of the trees and, overcome by her beauty, dive in to save her. Fortunately for the sake of her peace of mind and the plausibility (such as it was) of her day dream, she was blissfully unaware of the fact that her silky white dress was now the same colour as the surrounding water. After a while, however, she started to shiver and decided that some sort of exertion was called for, if only to warm her up a bit. She rolled over onto her front and started to do that awkward, neck wrenching, head-out-of-water breast stroke that women like her use to avoid their mascara running.

As she swam, she did indeed hear a voice. But not the simultaneously dulcet yet unquestionably masculine tones of her favourite Elf. It was a woman's voice. And definitely not dulcet (though arguably a bit masculine). It had more than a little of the fishwife about it.

She cast her eyes towards the bank. There, in place of trees and the distant view of the motorway, was a cluster of thatched huts, wisps of bluish smoke rising into the air from their chimneys. And clustered on the river bank was a group of people. Success of sorts – not Legolas, but at least she seemed to be in some part of Middle Earth. She struck out for the shore, but discovered that she was colder and more tired than she'd realised, the sodden skirts of her dress hampering her movements and threatening to pull her under. A couple of the men stripped off their tunics and started to wade into the shallows. Then one launched himself through the water towards her. He managed to grab her and tow her to the bank.

She landed in a spluttering heap on the muddy riverside, coughing and shivering. A rough blanket was thrown round her shoulders and the fishwife helped her to her feet. Tension relieved, everyone started talking at once. To Charlize's horror, she didn't understand a word of it. Eventually, the fishwife yelled something sharp but effective in shutting the rest up, and led Charlize to one of the huts. Once inside, she supplied her with a linen shift and a coarse woollen dress of a nondescript grey colour. She helped Charlize lace it up. To my friend's horror, it appeared that there was no underwear to go with this. Fortunately, the dress reached the ground.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

We pieced things together later. In retrospect it became obvious that time in Middle Earth had to pass at a different rate from time in our world. But for the time being, for Charlize one of the sources of anxiety and worry about her plight (other than the language barrier, the inedible food, the scratchy clothing, the damp and uncomfortable bedding, and the fact that her rescuers made her muck in with the work of the household) was the thought that her family and friends had no idea where she'd got to, and she'd been gone for at least a week.

She picked up a few words for items like bread, water, broom, and the like. But for the most part, she was isolated by her lack of their language. The river did appear to be called the Bruinduin (I guess it was a small, unimportant river in some obscure part of Middle Earth, hence it had never appeared on any of Tolkien's maps). Days were filled with back-breaking labour. There were floors to be swept, vegetables to be peeled, potato patches to be dug, pigs to be fed.

But the absolute nadir of her experience was the point at which she had to help with the laundry. Various items – shifts, men's underwear, tunics – were tipped into a big wooden tub. The fishwife (Charlize never did work out how to pronounce her name) handed Charlize a wooden paddle, obviously intended to pound the washing with. Then she filled the tub with hot water from cauldrons heated over the fire. She disappeared behind the hut, only to return moments later with a bucket. Charlize reeled back in horror as the smell hit her – it was full of fermented urine. The woman tipped it into the hot water, at which point the stench of urea became unbearable. The ammonia fumes hit the back of Charlize's throat and burned the inside of her nostrils, and she retched and gagged. The whole situation became too much for her, and she fainted.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I found her on the muddy bank of the Mersey, just round the corner from where I'd been reading my book. As I knelt down beside her, a pungent smell assaulted my nose. Her eyes fluttered open, just in time to hear my first words to her.

"Charlize, have you wet yourself?"

**Before I get lynched by any Mancunians out there, can I just say that I spent the formative parts of my childhood and teens there, and love the city dearly. But, much as I love it, its suburbs are not pretty.**

**Thanks to Sleepy Hollow, Borys, Sandy-wmd, and an anonymous guest for taking the time to review. **

**I can't PM the anonymous guest, but if you check out my list of favourite stories you'll find some that use some of the ideas you suggested. "Dear Writers of FanFiction" has Boromir complaining about always being cast as the sexist bad guy. There's also a 'really dim but stupidly chivalrous Legolas' Mary Sue parody, but I'm afraid it's in French (and again, with good guy Boromir – he's the beacon of sanity round which the rest of the madness unfolds). Also, the absolute classic "Official Fanfic University of Middle Earth", in which Gimli does get the girl for once (and Legolas hasn't a clue about romance and really isn't interested). I haven't come across a Legolas-the-lech story yet (if anyone knows of one, I'd love to read it), but if you can track down the episode of Ricky Gervais's sitcom "Extras" with Orlando Bloom in it, that might fit the bill. Orlando sends himself up and makes fun his persona as sex god incarnate; he's hilarious. Anyway, thanks for the ideas – a couple of them are now rattling around inside my head and beginning to shape up into something interesting.**

**Note: I am reliably informed by Horrible Histories that fermented urine was indeed used to do laundry in the Middle Ages. **

**Also, I did a bit of online research on Medieval underwear, having always thought that women's knickers/panties (depending on whether you speak British or US English) were a relatively late addition to female dress. And it looks like I was right on this one. There is a historian at the University of Innsbruck, Beatrix Nutz, who has examined archaeological finds from an Austrian castle, dating back to the 15****th**** century. According to Nutz, the garments that look a bit like modern women's knickers were in fact worn by men (there are Medieval drawing showing men and women having tug-of-war contests with these, a symbolic representation of "who wears the pants" in the household – in the normal run of things, men wore them and women didn't). **

**But, to my amazement, they did have bras which looked remarkably like modern ones. So I guess I'm going to have to take back the snide things I said in the last chapter about bras in fanfic being anachronistic. Though they didn't fasten round the back like modern ones – the picture I saw on line showed a line of lace-holes down the side of the cup, suggesting they were laced up at either side. I don't quite know how they worked without modern elastic, mind you. Blimey, the things you can find out with the aid of the internet (a google search for "Beatrix Nutz Innsbruck" will bring up the relevant pictures! According to the summary on the Artdaily website, "The bras were intricately decorated with lace and other ornamentation, the statement said, suggesting they were also meant to please a suitor.") **

**Reviewers get virtual Eccles cakes.**

**Horse-riding is on hold for the time being I'm afraid, 'cos I keep having other ideas. Next chapter will involve a film-buff competition, so get studying – it'll be other films members of the cast of LOTR have appeared in. Points will be awarded. And what do points mean? That's right, mechanical devices for switching trains from one railway track to another (apologies to the late, great Humphrey Littleton for stealing his joke). Virtual versions of culinary delicacies from the North West of England as a prize.**


	3. Riding Lesson

**Chapter 3: Riding Lessons.**

**Disclaimer. I don't own LOTR, sadly.**

**Sorry, haven't finished the film competition chapter – so back to plan A and the horse-riding scenario. Also, sorry, because my imagination seems to have come up with something really surreal. It's a sort of tribute to some of the kids' books I used to come across in hotels we stayed in on holiday when I was a child, books which were old and mildewed and dated even back then. Apologies if I've "jumped the shark" with this chapter!**

**And thanks as always to Lady Peter for her suggestions. All remaining mistakes and infelicities of phrasing are of course mine. And I insisted on keeping the non-sentence (it's meant to be Sophie's stream of consciousness musings, which aren't always grammatical).**

"I have a great plan," said Charlize. My heart sank. I braced myself.

"We're going to go horse riding. I've got it booked, out at some stables in Poynton. Sunday afternoon. My dad says he'll drop us out there."

Horses. My worst nightmare. And this was going to be even worse. This was horses plus Charlize's Lord of the Rings obsession. Maybe I could break my leg between now and Sunday. Or join the Foreign Legion. Or take holy orders. Or become an astronaut. Mars would do the trick nicely.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sunday arrived. I sat in the back of Charlize's dad's Audi. It never ceased to surprise me that such an expensive car was so cramped in the back. I know I'm quite tall for a girl, but even so. I stared out the window at the Cheshire countryside, trying not to think of the fate that awaited me. Eventually, we pulled into a yard behind a Victorian farmhouse. We were greeted by our instructor, a down-to-earth woman in jodhpurs and a hacking jacket.

Quarter of an hour later, I found myself perched on a smelly, uncomfortable equine mountain. Give her her due, Charlize looked much more at ease than I did. We started out in the dressage ring behind the stables. Walking I could handle. Trotting was a whole different thing. I was meant to go up and down with the horse. I couldn't get the timing right. Eventually I did half a circuit just about getting it (or so I thought), only to be told I was on the "wrong diagonal". What the heck was that meant to mean? I was going round in circles, not across the diagonals. I may not do horses, but I'm not that bad at maths. Eventually we cantered. I swear my life flashed before my eyes. I am built for comfort, not for speed.

After half an hour in the dressage ring, we went out for a hack. This was the point at which Charlize's plan swung into action. We were at the top of a gentle grassy meadow running down to a stream. Charlize dug her heels into her horse's flanks and set off at a slow canter down the hill. Near the bottom she aimed her horse (if that's the right word) at a fallen log. The horse jumped gracefully, and as it landed, she slid off in a vague attempt at a stunt-double's dramatic fall. Our instructor set off at a gallop down the hill and rapidly dismounted beside Charlize's prostrate body. I followed as quickly as I could at a clumsy trot, bumping up and down in the saddle, all thoughts of a rising trot or anything else technical banished by the fear that this time Charlize had genuinely hurt herself.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

According to her later report, Charlize had not hurt herself. She'd had a mercifully, albeit smelly, soft landing. She came to in a dark stable, in a very well-used, in fact, over-used heap of straw.

"Wotcha!" said a gravelly voice. "You must be the new deputy. Just let me finish shovelling the muck out and I'll show you round."

There, wielding a shovel full of manure, was a small, yellow-eyed, fearsomely fanged orc. Charlize shrank back in horror. The orc, fortunately, showed no immediate signs of intending to attack. Charlize didn't feel entirely reassured, however. She waited anxiously, surveying her surroundings for escape routes, but could see none. She braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. Instead, the orc gave her a toothy grin, then spoke.

"I'm Shaznag, the stable-hand. Welcome to the Minas Morgul stables. Let's see, you'll need a set of black robes, then I'll show you your horse and introduce you to the rest of the second team."

"Deputy who? Second team what?" Charlize spluttered.

"Deputy Nazgûl. You know, for when the Nine are busy in Gondor or wherever but the Dark Lord needs people scaring somewhere else. He uses his second team." The orc dumped the sloppy mess on the spade into a bucket. Ducking through the open doorway, he carried it out to the midden. Having got rid of the malodorous contents, he pottered back into the stable. "Come on," he said, wiping his hands on his trousers and gesturing for Charlize to follow him. "Thinking about it, it makes sense to meet the team first. You're just in time for tea."

Charlize followed Shaznag across the cobbled courtyard. A thin, penetrating rain fell from dark clouds above, and a fell wind from the east blew down the mountain slopes, chill and dismal. The walls on either side closed in claustrophobically, and the whole building exuded an atmosphere of menace. The black stones rose upwards above her head, and she caught glimpses of gargoyles, their twisted faces like Shaznag's, but frozen in expressions of fearsome hatred. Charlize shivered with fear. In front of her, Shaznag lifted the latch of a heavy wooden door. An orange glow spilled out of the doorway – Charlize immediately imagined all sorts of hideous furnaces and forges and red-hot torture implements. She could hear the crackle of a fire, surely being used for some evil intent. But faint heart ne'er won fair Legolas. She braced herself and stepped over the threshold.

The actual scene couldn't have been more different from her imaginings. The orange glow turned out to come from rather a cosy looking fireplace. Four black-cloaked figures sat, three at a table covered in a red and white checked table cloth, the fourth in a threadbare but comfy looking armchair by the fire. The table was laid for tea, with a tray of cucumber sandwiches and cakes together with a teapot (complete with crocheted tea-cosy in bright colours). In the centre of the table, there was a jam jar holding a slightly wilting bunch of daisies. The figure by the fire appeared to be toasting crumpets.

"Hello, Shazzer, old chap," said one of the figures at the table. He had the poshest voice Charlize had ever heard. In fact, the only place she'd ever heard clipped tones like it were in some of the old war movies her mum watched on telly.

"I've brought you the new recruit," grunted Shaznag.

"Fantastic." The figure stood up and shoved his hood back from his face to reveal a teenage boy, about the same age as Charlize, with floppy blond hair. The others also revealed their faces.

"I'm Julian," said the boy, "and these reprobates are Tarquin, Lucinda and Bunty."

"Hello," chorused the other Deputy Nazgûl. They were every bit as posh as Julian.

"Uh, hi, um, I'm Charlize. Look, I'm not really sure I'm meant to be here, I've kind of fallen through from another world."

Lucinda grinned broadly. "Oh, don't worry about that. So have we. You see, when Sauron realised he needed more Nazgûl than Tolkien had provided him with, he decided to borrow some characters from other books in good old John Ronald Reuel's house. Now, there were loads of good ones to choose from – _Beowulf – _he could have had Grendel. Or Malory's _Morte d'Arthur – _Morgana would have made a fabulous Nazgul. Though maybe a bit too good; she'd have given the Witch King of Angmar a run for his money. What a power struggle that could have been! Or just think of all the brilliant things in Greek mythology. The Dark Lord could have had his very own hydra, or a minotaur, or the Furies."

"Unfortunately," Julian chipped in, "he sub-contracted the job to the Mouth of Sauron. Lovely chap, but I'm afraid not the sharpest sword in the armoury. JRR happened to have his niece staying, and the Mouth picked up one of her books by mistake."

"So you're characters from one of her books?" said Charlize.

"Absolutely on the button, old chap," said Julian.

"Can I ask what sort of book?" asked Charlize, with some trepidation.

"Oh, the only sort worth reading," gushed Bunty. "We're from the _Four Chums in the Pony Club_ series. It ran to 37 books in the end, published between 1936 and 1952. We were all the rage back then."

"Oh," said Charlize, weakly. Then she couldn't help asking, "Do you find people are _very_ scared of you?"

"So long as we keep the cloaks and hoods on, and just give unearthly shrieks, we don't do too badly," said Julian. "But in all honesty I have to admit that if we talk it does seem to spoil the effect a bit."

"After all," said Tarquin, speaking for the first time, in an extraordinarily upper crust drawl, "Didn't it ever strike you that the Nazgul were perhaps just a tad inept when they chased the Hobbits across the Shire?"

"A tad inept? More like utterly useless, old bean," said Julian, with a self-deprecating chuckle. "My maiden aunts are scarier. The hobbits should have been a pushover, except it wasn't the first team, it was us on our first mission. The first team only got in on the act at Bree."

"And jolly good they were too," said Bunty, in a tone close to hero-worship. "I have a huge pash on Number Seven," she giggled. "He's just too dreamy for words."

"I suppose that would make sense of how the hobbits could get away with hiding under a tree root in a way that wouldn't even have fooled my four-year-old cousin," said Charlize. Then she added, "The thing is, I don't think I'm meant to be a Nazgûl, not even a Deputy Nazgûl. I think I'm meant to have ended up on the other side."

"Oh, what jolly rotten luck," said Bunty, kindly. "Buttered crumpet?"

"You know, you really should think about giving this a try," said Lucinda. "We get to gallop around all over the place, and the black horses the orcs steal for us from Rohan are just simply spiffing."

"Yes, I simply don't see the big appeal of the other side," asked Bunty. "Being baddies is just so much more fun. We have an absolutely ripping time of it."

"Well, you know how you feel about Number Seven? That's how I feel about Legolas," Charlize explained. "I just have to try to find him."

"Heavens above, the blighter's an Elf," Julian burst out, sounding decidedly Colonel Blimp-ish. "I mean, they wear their hair long, for goodness sake. Not at all the sort of chap one would want to introduce to one's sister."

"Quite so, Julian dearest," said Lucinda, then turned to Charlize. She held out her left hand, and Charlize saw that on her ring finger she sported a ring with a diamond the size of a duck-egg. "It's not like there's no opportunity for romance here. I'm engaged to a rather dashing orc captain, well, dashing once you've got past the yellow eyes and fangs. From absolutely one of the best families in the Ephel Duath. And his mater's a dear. We're planning a spring wedding. And he's got a brother... I could introduce you at the next dance."

"OMG," muttered Charlize. She decided the only way out was to resort to the tried and trusted technique she used when she'd forgotten her homework. She held her breath till she fainted.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Charlize told me later that the smelling salts the instructor used to bring her round were the best thing she'd ever smelled.

**Thanks to Tatharwen, Sleepy Hollow and Sandy WMD for the lovely reviews. I'm so glad you're enjoying this. (Sandy – the cover art is for you, because I know how much you liked the Lego Legolas updates in my last fic - actually, there is Lego News in the Annafan household. We have bought the corsair ship set, complete with army of the dead. The only problem is we now have two Legolases in the house. This could get very confusing.) **

**I've done about 6 ½ out of 10 films so far, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long for an update (though I'm half way through ****É****owyn's first meeting with Faramir in my other new fic, so I need to get a move on with that too).**

**Reviews gratefully received.**


	4. Speed Dating

**Chapter 4: Speed Dating.**

**Disclaimer: Still don't own LOTR. Nor ****_The Magician's Nephew._**** Nor any of the films or TV shows I'm borrowing bits of...**

**Thanks as ever to Lady Peter for looking bits of this over and making great suggestions.  
**

**OK, heads down, pens and paper at the ready, fingers on buzzers, it's competition time... Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the films/TV series in this chapter. They all feature cast members from LOTR. Answers in a review, please. Virtual black pudding and eccles cakes dipped in black treacle for the successful entries. What do you mean, that'll result in no entries? Alright, I relent. Virtual chocolate brownies and a shout-out for successful entries. Bonus points if you spot the film in which Peter Jackson puts in a cameo as the village drunk!**

**5 is for Zees Muse on the unlikely chance that she ever ventures this way. **

Charlize had the idea on one of her endless shopping trips. We were looking at cheap costume jewellery in Boots and she suddenly pounced on some rings, with cheap paste stones made of some sort of plastic resin.

"Green for out, yellow for in," she announced, triumphantly.

"What?" I asked, rather lamely.

"The green rings take us to the wood-between-worlds, then I use the yellow ones to jump into pools till I find the pool that leads me to Middle Earth."

"Oh, yes, obviously. When you put it like that I can't possibly imagine why I didn't see it before."

She borrowed a fiver off me and bought the rings, then we retired to a quiet corner of the local park. Carefully, we put the green rings on. Suddenly I was aware of a tugging sensation. The world dissolved into coloured patterns which swirled round our heads. I found myself being dragged upwards through the swirls, then through darkened space studded by stars. Suddenly light appeared above my head, dappled, the way light looks as it falls through the surface of a swimming pool when you're swimming under water. Then, in less time than it took me to register this underwater feeling, we broke the surface and found ourselves in a silent wood, with tall trees with trunks set in green turf, and, between the trees, stretching into the distance, occasional pools of water like the one we'd just emerged from.

"Blimey, it worked," I said.

Charlize simply gave me a killer look. "Of course. Did you think I was faking it about the dwarves, or the Medieval village? Or the Nazgûl?" The thought had, of course, crossed my mind, but I realised admitting to it would be a really bad idea.

"You wait here," Charlize continued. "That way we know which pool to jump back into. I'll explore each of the others in turn." She strode off to the nearest one, and, slipping the yellow ring on, jumped in.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_1. The Red Queen_

Charlize found herself in a bright room, sunlight streaming through little diamond shaped panes of glass in the windows. The room itself was not unlike the rooms she'd seen on the school trip to Bramall Hall, with walls of white plaster panels between dark oak beams and uprights. She glanced down at herself, and was delighted to see that she was wearing a gorgeously embroidered silk dress. Rich panels of brocade down the front of the bodice gave way to a wide, gathered skirt which swished elegantly round her legs. _This is more like it,_ she thought. A slight noise behind her caused her to turn.

There, on the other side of the room, was Galadriel. But everything about her appearance (save for those incredible eyes) seemed wrong. Her hair wasn't flowing and golden. It was set in tight red curls about her head. She wore a lace cap on top of her head. Her dress wasn't flowing and elegant. It had a fitted bodice, wide gathered skirt and big puffed sleeves, all very elaborately embroidered, and a lace ruff round the neck line. Charlize's inspection was interrupted by an imperious voice.

"Don't just stand there gawping, girl. Show the French ambassador in."

Charlize hustled over to the door and opened it. In came a tall, dark-haired man. He was strangely familiar, with a prominent nose, strong jaw, melting brown eyes and a very athletic build. Charlize ushered him into the room, her mind frantically trying to place him. Then it came to her. He was the man out of one of the pictures on the wall of her dad's games room at home. "A captain of men". The words from _Lord of the Rings _rattled around her head. "Faramir," some part of her mind chipped in rather unhelpfully, because it clearly wasn't him. This man, on the other hand ... he'd been famous a decade or so earlier... Yes, definitely a captain of men, specifically, the captain of the eleven men that constituted Manchester United. What the heck was his name?

The man swept a deep bow. "Your Majesty," he said, in a thick French accent. Everything clicked into place. That old supporters' chant from the terraces. Without meaning to, Charlize uttered her thoughts aloud.

"Ooh, Ah, Cantona..."

"What did you just say, girl?" asked the Queen.

"Oops, wrong film," said Charlize, and slipped the green ring back onto her finger.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I had almost nodded off when suddenly I became aware of a stirring in the pool a few feet away from my resting place. Charlize stepped from the water onto the smooth green turf and made her way between the tree trunks to where I lay. She sat down and told me about what had happened. First, though, she had to remind me of why we were here at all; the wood seemed to have a strangely soporific effect, and a little time spent there seemed to make one forget why one was there at all.

She told me about her encounter with the red-haired Galadriel, and Captain Cantona. The story seemed vaguely familiar, but the sleepy atmosphere meant that somehow I couldn't grasp hold of the relevant memory. The atmosphere seemed to be getting to Charlize too. As she told the story, her speech got slower and slower, and she started to repeat things she had already said, then forget details of the story. She had almost drifted off to sleep when I reminded her why were here.

"Aren't you going to have another go at finding Legolas?"

"Oh, yes," she said, in a slightly absent tone of voice, then gave her head a shake. "What do you mean, 'another go'?" she added.

"Well, you've just been into one world, but it turned out to be the wrong one..."

"Did I? Was it? I suppose you must be right. Okay, let me try the pool over there."

And with that she wandered across the turf, popped on her yellow ring, and jumped into another pool.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_2. Shaken, not stirred_

This time, Charlize landed in an ungainly heap on the floor. The floor was swaying rather violently. _An earthquake? _she asked herself, alarmed by the prospect. Then she looked up. Scenery flashed past the windows, and she realised she was in a moving train. At the far end of the carriage, a dark haired man was tied to a chair. Despite the ropes holding him in place, he somehow exuded an air of casual menace and dangerous attractiveness.

"But who's this?" came an incredibly posh voice from behind her. She turned, half expecting to see Julian the Deputy Nazgûl again. But it was Boromir! A clean-shaven, much younger Boromir. A very, very hot Boromir. He stepped towards her, and pulled her to her feet, before kissing her savagely. Charlize tried to push him off, thoughts swirling round. _This isn't meant to be happening: he's not Legolas. Mmm, not bad, though_. Breaking the kiss, he pushed her roughly back to the floor.

"She tastes of strawberries, James," Boromir said.

"Wrong film," muttered Charlize, and slipped the ring back on.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This time, I really was asleep. Charlize had to shake me to wake me up. She filled me in on the details of her encounter with Boromir, once more seemingly forgetting the story almost as fast as she told it to me. Again, I reminded her why we were here (it took quite a lot of mental effort on my part to remember this – I seemed to be on the brink of forgetting everything too), then she found yet another pool to explore.

XXXXXXXXXXXxXXXXXXXXXX

_3. Ooo Rah, Master Chief!_

Charlize found herself lying in mud, surrounded by a group of mostly men and one woman, though it took a couple of looks to make sure of this, since the woman sported combat fatigues and a buzz cut. It was like the PE lesson from her worst nightmare – a man with a gun standing over them, forcing them to do press ups and sit ups by the hundred. She glanced around looking desperately for help. And then found it – her eyes settled on Aragorn. He was dressed strangely, in fatigues, and his hair was short. He was clean-shaven, except for a neatly trimmed moustche. But it was still unmistakably Aragorn. She started to speak, when his voice cut her off.

"Pain is your friend. It will keep you awake. It will tell you when you're hurt. It will bring you home safely. But do you know the best thing about pain?"

"SIR, NO SIR," yelled the mud-splattered people around her. What was this? Some sort of masochists' summer camp? She didn't know how they could find the breath to yell that loud. After the exercise, she could barely speak. But Aragorn supplied the answer.

"It tells you you're still alive."

Charlize struggled to do another press up. Half way through, she felt a boot in the small of her back, and looked up to see Aragorn staring down at her. He held her gaze for a moment, then addressed the troops again.

"You may have noticed a bell on the west edge of this training ground. At any time, if you feel you cannot take this, that bell is your salvation. Go to it, ring it three times, and you will be out of here."

The woman with the buzz cut spoke in a firm, determined voice. "Sir, I can handle this, Master Chief, Sir."

"Well, I can't, and I don't want to either," Charlize burst out, then staggered over to the bell and hit it sharply three times.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_4. Take the Blue Pill_

Her next foray into a new pool led to an even stranger place. She landed with a bump amid some rubbish bags next a dumpster, in a squalid alley. Some sort of urban nightmare landscape surrounded her.

A running figure emerged from the shadows at the end of the alley. A tall, slender woman with slicked-back short dark hair and a knee length leather trenchcoat sprinted past, knocking Charlize out of the way. She ran at the most ridiculous speed, with jerky movements. It was like watching a speeded up film. Suddenly, from the shadows, two men appeared, also moving ridiculously fast. It was almost as if they'd materialized from nowhere. They wore dark glasses and dark suits. But the mouth and jawline of the one in the lead was unmistakable.

"Elrond?" said Charlize.

The men ignored her for the moment. Their attention was focused on the woman, who dived into a phone booth at the end of the alley. Picked up the receiver. And disappeared. Charlize's mouth dropped open. Agent Elrond turned to Charlize. His face was grim and threatening. And the tops of his ears were definitely not pointed.

"Oops, wrong movie," said Charlize, slipping on the green ring once more.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_5. Steal from the Rich_

This counted as a near-miss, surely. She was in the wrong movie, but at least it was _The Hobbit, _so she could take comfort from the fact that she was in Middle Earth, albeit 50 years or so too early. Not that this would be a problem if she was an Elf. She'd have all eternity to find Legolas. She looked over at the male figure looming out of the shadows towards her. Thorin Oakenshield! Except that this Thorin Oakenshield didn't have a beard. A faint hint of rather sexy stubble, but definitely no beard. And he was normal, human height. (Either that, or she'd turned back into a blooming dwarf again.) And he looked incredibly good in a tight black leather tunic and trousers. (Okay, if he looked that good, she could live with being a dwarf, so long as she was a pretty one). He towered over her, forbiddingly.

"So, a wench wearing leggings This can mean only one thing. You are one of Robin of Locksley's outlaws." He grasped her chin in an iron fist, and turned her face up so she looked straight into his eyes. "Tell, me, where is Robin's encampment?" He held a dagger against the side of her neck, the point almost breaking the skin. This guy wasn't messing around. To heck with how hot he was, it was time to make a quick exit.

"Mumfle," said Charlize, whose jaw couldn't move in Not-Quite-Thorin's grasp. She slipped the ring back on...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_6. Love amidst the corpses_

Only to find herself in a morgue. Surrounded by corpses. Eurgh. And the one she was looking at certainly hadn't died of natural causes. She heard footsteps and ducked rapidly behind a cupboard. Then the sound of another corpse being placed on one of the empty mortuary slabs. A woman's voice cut the silence.

"Set down, set down your honourable load,

If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,

Whilst I a while obsequiously lament,

Th'untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster."

Good grief! The woman sounded like she'd escaped from a really dull English lesson. She continued in a similar vein for quite a while. Charlize struggled to follow what she was saying, but managed to get her head round the idea that this was a dead king, and that the woman was the widow of the king's son (apparently the body on the other slab), and they'd both been murdered by the same person. _Harsh_, Charlize thought to herself. Then suddenly she heard footsteps, then a new voice. The voice was unmistakable. It was Gandalf, of all people, also speaking as though he'd escaped from the same really dull English lesson.

"Sweet saint, for charity, be not so cursed."

"Foul devil, for God's sake hence and trouble us not," the woman replied angrily, and launched into a long, complicated speech, the gist of which was that Gandalf had killed both her husband and her father in law. Eventually she made the accusation point blank: "Didst thou not kill this king?"

"I grant ye," Gandalf answered. Charlize's mind was in a whirl. Okay, she might have got this wrong, because the language was a real struggle, but Gandalf seemed to have just admitted that he _had_ killed both of them. Surely Gandalf didn't just go around murdering people. Had they deserved it? Did this mean the woman was a bad guy? Was she maybe a spy of Saruman's, like Wormtongue had been? What was going on? She sounded so sincere though. The argument was really heating up now, and even Charlize had to admit that the language, though complicated, had a certain something.

Charlize peeked round the cupboard. The woman wore a 1930s style coat, with a fur collar. Gandalf looked quite different too – his hair was short, and slicked back, he had no beard, only a pencil moustache, and he wore a military great coat and carried himself with a swagger. What was it with all the moustaches? Why did men grow such unattractive facial fungus? Charlize dragged her mind back from this digression and tried to pay attention to their words again.

"Then God grant me, too,

Thou mayst be damnèd for that wicked deed.

O he was gentle, mild, and virtuous," the woman said, sounding anguished

"The better for the King of Heaven that hath him," Gandalf replied, his voice smooth and suave.

"He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come," she said. Gandalf actually had the cheek to reply that then the dead man ought to thank him for having sent him to heaven. Charlize was shocked. This wasn't the friendly, avuncular wizard she was used to. He was a complete slimeball. The woman seemed to agree. She continued, the embodiment of cold, focussed fury, "And thou unfit for any place but hell."

Gandalf's voice dropped to a soft, caressing whisper, and said, "Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it."

"Some dungeon," the woman replied sharply.

"Your bedchamber," Gandalf murmured.

_Yuck, he's coming onto her. Over her dead husband's body. The dead husband he killed. What the heck is this? Whoever wrote this movie script was one sick so-and-so, _Charlize thought. She listened uncomfortably as Gandalf's seduction continued. To her utter horror, it seemed to be succeeding. Eventually the woman left. Gandalf stayed, apparently talking to himself.

"Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?" he said smugly.

_Okay, make that one extremely sick so-and-so, _Charlize amended, mentally. She shuffled uncomfortably and knocked the cupboard. A metal implement fell from the top and clattered to the ground. Gandalf whirled round to look at her. The look in his eyes scared her even more than Not-Quite-Thorin's dagger had.

"Oops, gotta go," said Charlize.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_7. Peace Lily_

Out of the autopsy suite, into the crime scene would have described things perfectly, were it not for the tricks Charlize's memory was playing on her. She was in a small suburban living room, surrounded by people in white paper suits and hoods, with masks on. A man with short, red hair, wearing police uniform walked into the room, and made his way up to one of the people in the suits.

The man took a deep breath, as though psyching himself up for a difficult situation. "I have something important to tell you and I didn't wanna do it over the phone. Janine, I've been transferred. I'm moving away for a while."

"I'm not Janine," said a male voice from within the paper suit. The policeman, sorry, police officer, looked embarrassed, then went over to the other paper-suited figure. Charlize looked at the figure's face (at least the part that was visible above the mask). Those eyes! Incredible, beautiful, almond shaped, ageless blue eyes. Absolutely unmistakeable. It was Galadriel again. Galadriel the crime scene technician. How the heck could the guy with the red hair have been so dense as to mistake her for someone else? Specially when the someone else was a bloke.

"Janine," said Dense Guy, "I've been transferred. I'm moving away for a while."

"I know. Bob told me."

The row unfolded as Charlize listened. Dense Guy eventually came up with the totally clichéd line "It's not that long ago we were talking about getting married."

"Yes, but you were already married to the force, weren't you?" said Galadriel. Charlize nearly snorted at this; it sounded exactly like the sort of dialogue from the daytime soaps her mum listened to. Dense Guy was such a dork, Charlize thought to herself. If Galadriel's next words were anything to go about, the Lady of the Golden Wood thought so too. She claimed that his job was all he cared about. Dense Guy whined that this wasn't true, there were other things in his life besides the job.

"No, you're right, you do have that rubber plant," Galadriel said.

"It's a Japanese Peace Lily," he whinged. Charlize could stand it no longer.

"For heavens sake, Galadriel, this guy is a complete loser." (She made "loser" stretch out in a sing-song voice.) "Go back to Celeborn. Please. Don't waste any more time on bad romance, day-time TV-stylee."

The last thing she saw as she slipped the ring on was Dense Guy bridling with indignation.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

_7. All at Sea._

Finally she'd done it. She couldn't mistake those finely chiselled cheek bones and that jaw line anywhere. The ground was rocking alarmingly once more, and she realised she was on a moving ship, a sailing ship. Perhaps they were already on their way to Valinor. That would be quite convenient; cut out all the dull battle stuff and cut straight to the happily-ever-after bit.

Charlize wasn't the best of sailors, but what the heck. Her dream Elf was within sight. However, something wasn't quite right. His hair was dark brown and curly, and, as he finally turned and met her gaze, she realised his eyes were brown. The brown eyes could perhaps be put down to passion. After all, she remembered from the films that they did sometimes change colour at moments of heightened emotion. When she hit the pause button on that deliciously coy sideways glance during Aragorn's coronation, for instance, they were definitely brown. But the hair! What had become of those fabulous blonde locks, the silky hair that looked like it would flow through her fingers like spring water.

"And who might you be?" said a woman's voice from behind her. Charlize turned to see a very beautiful, gamine-featured young woman, in a man's shirt and breeches, wearing high sea boots and brandishing a fearsome sword. More to the point, in between glaring at Charlize, she was giving some very possessive glances in Brunette-Leggy's direction. Sword or no, that aroused Charlize's ire.

"I might ask the same of you," she said.

"Elizabeth Swann, captain of this ship," said the woman. "And I think I've had quite enough of you eyeing up my Will." With that, she bundled Charlize over the side of the ship into the water.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**So, virtual chocolate brownies and a shout-out for working out what the films/TV series were. Bonus points for saying which one Peter Jackson puts in a cameo role in! Entries in a review (you know you want to...). Answers will be posted at the end of the next chapter.**

**Yeah, yeah, I know I did the changing eye colour joke in another fic (for those who haven't read it, the make-up artists on LOTR weren't always consistent in remembering to put in Orlando's blue contact lenses).**

**Thanks to Sleepy Hollow, Borys and Sandy for the reviews. Yes, Enid Blyton was one of my targets in the last chapter.**

**Next: Someone may, possibly, get a snog from Leggy. But it might not be Charlize. Mwah ha ha.**


	5. Someone meets Legolas

**Chapter 5: In which someone finally manages to meet Legolas.**

**Usual disclaimer. Not mine, not profiting from this in any way. And apologies to Ricky Gervais for stealing (oops, I mean, paying an homage to) an idea of his!**

**The results are out! Big congratulations to Madeleine/Anne (I think you're the same person) and Sleepy Hollow for getting them all correct. And I messed up the bonus question – it didn't make sense, sorry. But Madeleine correctly identified the film in which PJ appears as the town drunk – it's a cameo in the Fellowship of the Ring, while Sleepy Hollow got which film in my list PJ appears in – Hot Fuzz, but in fact as a homicidal Santa Claus, not the town drunk. Honourable mentions to Tatharwen, SandyWMD, Borys and StormwalkerofLorien for getting quite a few of the films. Chocolate brownies all round, with extra cream for Madeleine and Sleepy Hollow. Full list of answers at the end of this chapter.**

**I have to confess that this idea is largely stolen from somewhere else (in part from my guest reviewer back in chapter 1, in part Orlando Bloom's magnificent piece of self-satire in ****_Extras_****). As my comic hero Tom Lehrer put it: 'Plagiarize, let no-one else's work evade your eyes, that's why the good lord made your eyes, so don't shade your eyes, but plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize … (only remember, please, always to call it "research").' [****_The Lobachevsky Song_**** – a joke about plagiarism that works on so many levels I can only suggest you google it to find out more].**

**Finally, sorry for the delay. I've been a bit obsessed with the other fic I've got on the go at the moment. But I think I've got the hardest bits of roughing it out done now, so hopefully I'll update this a bit more regularly.**

Squelch, squelch, squelch. That's the noise my feet were making. Charlize and I were making our way across Saddleworth Moor, in the sort of rain that only the Pennines can supply. I know, I know, Charlize staggering across peat hags in the middle of a bleak stretch of moorland in the middle of nowhere. You are way ahead of me. This expedition was, of course, driven entirely by Charlize's Lord of the Rings obsession. The idea this time was for Charlize to wander around the bleak moorland until she emerged in Hollin/ Eriador/ whatever it's called towards the beginning of the fellowship's road trip. I was more worried about this than I had been about any madcap scheme so far. Charlize was certain at some point to try to lose me; she wasn't going to want me cramping her style with golden boy. And getting lost on Saddleworth Moor was not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. Specially not in weather this bad.

Typically, it didn't take long before Charlize managed to slide off down a peat hag out of sight. I set off at a slightly lumbering run. (Yes, I had the rucksack. Again.) I crested the top of the hummock, lost my footing, and slid on my bum down the coal-black slimy peat slope, hitting into my friend's legs as I came to a halt in an ungainly heap at the lowest point.

"Charlize. You mustn't try to lose me in this country. You can't read a map, you haven't got the pack with the spare food and extra clothes, it could be really dangerous." This time I was really feeling quite cross.

"Who on earth is 'Charlize' and more to the point, who are you?" said a puzzled voice. It added, "And have you really got some spare food in that pack?" I looked up. Not very far up. The person addressing me was on the short side, with unmistakeably furry feet.

"Oh, no, this really is not meant to happen this way," I mumbled, as a very much taller man strode over and hauled me to my feet by the collar of my fleece. I was frog-marched unceremoniously over to the nearby group, and deposited on the ground at the foot of Gandalf.

I don't think I really need to fill you in on the next bit. The usual stuff – who was I, what was I doing here, how did I come to know their names, was I in league with Sauron/ Saruman/ any randomly chosen baddie with a name beginning with 'S', was I going to alter the course of history inadvertently? Some of the fellowship were of course happy to take me at face value, others were convinced I was a spy. You've all read so many of these 10th Walker fics that you can fill in the details yourself. Except that some of the details differed subtly from the usual fanfic conventions.

For a start, it was Aragorn who had unceremoniously dragged me over and dumped me by Gandalf's feet, and was now petulantly stomping his foot declaring that I was a spy, and he was going to keep saying so no matter what the majority voted. And that I was a girl, and girls were, well, girly. (Great, the heir of Elendil, soon to become King of Gondor and most powerful man in Middle Earth and he doesn't know what a tautology is).

Boromir, meanwhile, was trying to calm things down, generally being pretty nice, and taking issue with Aragorn over the girly comments.

"You can't say that, Strider. Girls can do all sorts of stuff. Last time I went to Rohan I met this really cool girl who knocked the stuffing out of me sparring on the training grounds, then beat me hands down in every contest of horsemanship we tried. I had a go at chatting her up, but she told me she preferred her men more intellectual. Just my luck – the most fabulous woman ever, and the first one who's ever likely to prefer my little brother, swotty little runt that he is." But it was obvious from his affectionate chuckle that he was actually quite fond of the 'swotty little runt'.

As for the others, the hobbits were as you'd expect, short and furry-footed. Gandalf was as filled with gravitas as you'd expect. In fact, any more gravitas, and you'd have needed a special overflowing-gravitas-mopping-up-device. Legolas of course was the archetypical pretty boy, and stood there gazing meaningfully into the distance, looking soulful and chisel-jawed. The only other surprise was Gimli. Actually, thinking about it, perhaps he shouldn't have been. After all, in the book, he's a young-ish dwarf. And this Gimli looked nothing like the turnip-featured, heavily bearded dwarf from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. On the contrary, he bore more than a passing resemblance to Fili (or was it Kili? - the dark haired one, at any rate).

Council of war (or council of unexpected arrival of girly girl) over, Sam set to cooking supper, and everyone sat around not doing much, except of course for Legolas who was doing the communing-with-nature-staring-moodily-into-the-dis tance thing yet again. Of course, suddenly the inevitable happened. Someone (I didn't pick up who in the confusion) said something about a black cloud, Legolas shouted "Crebain from Dunland" and suddenly I found myself thrown under a nearby bush.

"What the heck are you doing here, beardy-weirdy?" said Legolas to Boromir, who'd come to rest with a thump in between the two of us.

"Chaperoning Lady Sophie. Eru knows she's going to need it with you around," Boromir grunted.

"Oh come on, like she's going to be able to resist this face," said Legolas, smugly. He actually ran his own hand along his jaw line, and pouted. "You know how it goes – needing my manly embrace in the terrifying darkness of Moria, those non-canon but extremely convenient hot springs in Lothlorien, a quick snog on the plains of Rohan, a stolen night in the convenient room she gets to herself in Edoras, maybe a passionate encounter in the falling rain at Helm's Deep. You know as well as I do – some time between here and Minas Tirith, she's going to fall into my lap like a ripe plum. Oh, sorry, Boromir, of course you don't – because you're not going all the way to Minas Tirith, are you?" The Elf sounded positively venomous.

"Go on, make fun of my impending death, why don't you? All in the best possible taste, because we know an Elf couldn't possibly be tasteless."

"Hey, it's not like it matters – you only have to hang around in limbo for a few days then it all starts again with a new tenth walker fic. And maybe one time in a hundred, you get the girl. But that's okay because I get the all the impossibly beautiful ones the other ninety-nine times."

"You mean you get the Mary Sues. At least when I get the girl, it tends to be a better class of fanfic. It may be only one time in a hundred, but you know I get the better deal."

"In your dreams, mate, in your dreams. Anyway, Sophie, how about it? Get to know the real me, the genuinely irresistible Elf underneath the surface veneer of irresistible Elvishness? Go on, let me kiss you."

"Uh, no thanks, if it's all the same to you. I think I'd sooner kiss a wookie, um, I mean a dwarf."

"Don't blame you. If this was a slash fic, I'd take Gimli over Leggy any time," chipped in Boromir.

"Shut it, Mr. I-can't-resist-the-evil-lure-of-the-ring," said Legolas, viciously. Boromir looked genuinely hurt by this.

Legolas turned back to me. "Come on, just one kiss, let me show you how I do it."

"Really, thanks but no thanks."

"Oh, I see, it's going to be one of those fics. The 'I hate Legolas' fics. Trust me, 5 chapters in, you'll be showing the first signs of weakness, passionate snog by chapter 8, elaborate wedding chapters 37 to 56, happily ever after by chapter 83. Come on, let's leave the boring stuff out and just cut straight to the action."

To my horror, Legolas climbed over Boromir and made a grab for me. Before I knew what was happening, he was slobbering all over me. It was a re-run of the kitchen scene from Charlize's last birthday, only with Legolas instead of Colin Postlethwaite from year 10. But the kissing technique was every bit as bad. It was like kissing my mum's washing machine on the extra-agitation, extra-water cycle she uses to deal with my brother's muddy football kit. No finesse at all, just a lot of saliva, and a tongue strangely reminiscent of the lifeless ones on the butcher's counter at Morrison's when my mum does the weekly shop. I punched him in the nose, hard.

"You've broke by dose, you ..."

"Language, elf-boy," said Boromir.

I decided it was time to try the 'holding-my-breath-till-I-faint' technique Charlize uses so well.

**Answers to the film competition.**

_**The Red Queen: **_**Cate Blanchett in the title role of ****_Elizabeth._**

_**Shaken, not stirred: **_**Sean Bean as the traitorous 006 in ****_Goldeneye._**

_**Ooo, Rah, Master Chief:**_** Viggo Mortensen as Master Chief John Urgayle in ****_GI Jane._**

_**Take the Blue Pill: **_**Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith in ****_The Matrix._**

_**Steal from the Rich: **_**Richard Armitage as Guy of Gisbourne in ****_Robin Hood. _****(BBC TV series, rather than film, but I'm led to believe it has been widely shown in other countries).**

_**Love amid the corpses:**_** Sir Ian McKellen in the title role of ****_Richard III._**

_**Peace Lily: C**_**ate Blanchett again, this time in ****_Hot Fuzz _****(a tricky one, as she's not in the credits, nor is Peter Jackson who puts in a quick cameo as the homicidal Santa impersonator who stabs Simon Pegg's character in the opening scene – bonus points if you mentioned Jackson).**

_**All at Sea:**_** Finally! Orlando Bloom in ****_Pirates of the Caribbean N, _****where N is an integer between 1 and 4****_. _****Take your pick as to which one, they're pretty much interchangeable after the first , that's not quite accurate, 1 is great fun, 2 is a remake of 1, and 3 and 4 are just irredeemably awful.**


	6. Bridezilla

**Chapter 6: Bridezilla**

**Disclaimer: Not mine, apart from some Lego (which technically isn't mine either, it's my small son's, but it was bought out of my pay cheque...) Nor do I own the works of Monty Python. Nor the idea that there is a circle of Dant****é****'s inferno reserved for writers of smutty fanfiction (that's the wonderful Lady Peter's idea).**

**Okay, grovelling apologies for the long gap between chapters. Sophie is going to explain to you.**

I don't know if you remember my feelings about the Trafford Centre. Actually, chances are you don't, since my author has been ignoring me while she obsessively writes romantic drivel (to put it politely) featuring Éowyn and Faramir, so we've had rather a long gap between updates. Though the break's actually been quite pleasant. I've been in limbo with Boromir, who is really interesting to talk to. (And for the record, there is nothing going on there. He is 45. I am 15. That would just be totally sick and wrong. Almost as sick and wrong as 2000 give-or-take and 15, not that Charlize will accept this. So definitely no romantic stuff. But Boromir has been teaching me how to use a sword which might be quite useful if I ever end up back in Middle Earth. But I digress.) Fortunately, my author's muse has currently hit the doldrums with the Farawyn/however-you-want-to-describe-the-pairing slush, so I, Sophie Hellman, am back.

To recap: The Trafford Centre – I'd sooner have my wisdom teeth out without anaesthetic. But Charlize had added a new and particularly sadistic twist to the experience. We are window shopping in bridal shops. So, on with the story...

Things had been distinctly awkward since our trip to Saddleworth Moor. Charlize had her suspicions about my trip to Middle Earth. I'd fed her a non-committal story about landing up somewhere similar to the unsuccessful Bruinduin trip, but I don't think she was buying it. She knew I was hiding something. She didn't know the half of it. No way was I telling her I'd snogged (or more accurately, been snogged by) her favourite Elven Prince. Though sometimes the temptation to tell her just how rubbish he was at it became almost irresistible. As a sort of peace offering, I'd rather reluctantly gone along with this trip to one of the innermost circles of Danté's Inferno (otherwise known as the Trafford Centre – it's just inside the circle to which writers of smutty fanfic get consigned). Charlize was eyeing up the window display of frothy white and ivory polyester.

"I don't want it to be, you know, a meringue," Charlize said. "I'm thinking more tasteful. Floaty and figure hugging, but with a bit of swish to the skirt. But I can't decide between strapless or the Kate look – those lace sleeves were lovely."

"Difficult," I said, thinking _Kill me now._

"Then there's shoes – heels so I'm almost as tall as him, and can compete with those graceful elleths? Or should I go for ballet flats so I can dance?"

"Mmm, which do you think would be more you?" The trick to this, I thought, was surely to keep making non-committal but vaguely supportive comments. It turned out I was wrong.

"You're useless. You're just not trying. I brought you along so you could have some input. But you're just leaving it all to me." Charlize shoved the shopping bags into my arms, and, as I stood there like a lemon trying not to drop them, flounced off round the corner. By the time I'd got the bags secured and followed her, she'd disappeared. Not just into a shop – it turned out that the corner led to a service corridor, with no shops, no doors except for a key-pad controlled one at the far end (which I presumed she hadn't got the code for). But there was no sign of Charlize.

"Oh no, not again."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Wake up, girl, it's time to start work for the day." Charlize woke to a hand gently shaking her shoulder. A woman, no, an elleth, with long blonde hair was standing beside the narrow bed. She held out a long flowing dress. _Things are finally looking up,_ Charlize thought. The elleth helped her slip the dress over her head, then laced the back. Charlize reached up to brush her hair from her face, and suddenly her breath stopped with surprise. Her hand met an unquestionably pointed tip to her ear. She was an elleth too. She felt like running round the room punching the air, but then realised this was not in keeping with her new found role as immortal, ethereal beauty. But something wasn't quite right – what was it the other elleth had said to her?

"Work?" she asked, in a puzzled tone.

"Why, yes, sewing, my girl."

"Why do you keep calling me 'girl'? We are both of the..." Charlize paused while she searched for the right word. Oh yes, "Eldar."

"But you are a mere hundred years old, not due to come of age for at least another thirty summers. And besides, your lowly station in life means you must work for a living, as must I. I realise it was late when you were brought here last night, but we do not get much time to rest. I am Krystal, by the way."

To give her her due, even Charlize realised 'Krystal' was a pretty strange name for an elf. She decided to find out more about this place.

"Where am I? I don't know how I got here. My thoughts and memories are confused. Perhaps I am really high born, but have suffered an unfortunate head injury which has left me with no recollection of my former life. I will have to work as a humble seamstress until Prince Legolas happens upon me and realises that I am the elleth who saved his life in battle, before being hit over the head and kidnapped by slavers." Charlize delivered this speech in what she hoped was an up-beat tone of voice. To her dismay, Krystal laughed out loud at this.

"What an imagination you young things have. Still, if it keeps you from feeling too sad about your true story, by all means choose to live in a dream world."

"So what is my true story?" asked Charlize.

"Alas, all too common. Cruelly neglected by your parents who did not understand your emo nature," (Charlize twitched at this point: 'emo' – was she actually in Tolkien's world or in someone else's fanfic?), "abused by your teachers, you fled into the wilderness, only to be taken into Thranduil's court. Alas, he, having lost his beloved wife to NSEDS, pays not enough attention to his court, and so we poor elleths of humble birth find ourselves more-or-less enslaved by the evil Lady of the Garderobe."

"Okay... Let's take this one thing at a time. NSEDS?" asked Charlize.

"Non-Specific Elleth Dysfunctional Syndrome," said Krystal. "The elleth fades, often as a result of lost love, but sometimes for no reason in particular except vague discontent. The result is death, or a one-way ticket out West."

Charlize frowned: 'one-way ticket out West.' The author of this fic really didn't care about the sentencing guidelines for crimes against the English language. She decided to move on to the next part of Krystal's speech.

"And the Lady of the Garderobe?"

"Our brutal overseer. And best friend of the Lady Suelennielwenweth, fiancée of Prince Legolas."

"Whoa, wait a moment – Prince Legolas has a fiancée?"

"Yes, she is beautiful beyond compare, with lavender eyes, golden hair, skin like peaches..."

"Yes, I get the picture," growled Charlize. "I suppose there's no chance she has a particularly luxuriant beard?"

"Beard? Good heavens, girl, those years of neglect and abuse must have addled your brain."

Krystal led Charlize into a large chamber full of slightly scared looking elleths. It was hard to tell, but something about their naïve air made Charlize think that they, like her, were elven adolescents. Krystal guided her to a table where three other girls sat, unpicking rubies from a length of silk and replacing them with diamonds, using incredibly tiny stitches. One rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and heaved a huge sigh. Then, to Charlize's amazement, the three began to talk in a broad West Yorkshire accent.

"I've been doing this by candlelight since three in the morning."

"Candlelight? You were lucky. I had to work by the light of my pet glow worm."

"Pet glow worm. Huh, some people have all the luck. I have to use wild, untamed glow worms, they won't stay still for more than two stitches at the time. And I started at two in the morning."

"Two, pah, I'm working twenty-five hour days. Then I go home and sleep in a cardboard box. And they don't have cardboard boxes in Middle Earth, so that means I get no sleep at all."

"And you tell that to the elleths nowadays and they doan't believe you."

Shaking her head in disbelief, Charlize sat down at the table and started to unpick rubies and replace them with diamonds. After a couple of hours of this activity, her fingers were stiff with the effort of holding the tiny needle, and her vision was beginning to go blurry. Suddenly their activity was interrupted by a tall, imposing Elf woman, followed by a staggeringly beautiful elleth, who did indeed have curiously artificial looking lavender eyes and gold hair.

"NO!" screeched Suelennielwenweth. "Sapphires. Sapphires! SAPPHIRES! From the moment my lavender orbs met his midnight blue orbs, I knew we were meant for each other. So they have to be lavender diamonds to match my lavender orbs, and sapphires to match his midnight blue orbs."

"'Orbs'? What the...?" said Charlize.

"For some reason we've never worked out," said Krystal, "she never says 'eyes', she only ever says 'orbs'."

"Eww, it makes me think of a glass-eye factory."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Charlize came back from this experience in a somewhat sombre mood. At first I assumed it was a short term thing, then I put it down to to exam nerves (we were in the middle of our GCSEs), but when the exams were over, she was still not back to her usual flighty self. One evening we were sitting on the swings in the local park, idly pushing ourselves to and fro.

"I can't get Suelennielwenweth the Bridezilla out of my mind. That was nearly me. But not in a good way. What should I do? I feel like such a bloody idiot. I kept on coming up with these really cheesy plot lines for Legomances, so it's hardly surprising they all went horribly wrong. But, I know it sounds really stupid, I still really want to meet Legolas..."

"Are you sure it's such a good idea," I said. "After all, what if he turns out not to be such a nice guy. Maybe he might be a total git – for all you know, he and Suelennielwenweth might deserve each other."

"You say that like you might actually know he is," Charlize said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

"Um, well, you know... That time when we went to Saddleworth Moor... I did end up in Middle Earth. Legolas turned out to be a complete tosser."

Charlize looked into the distance. "I knew there was something you weren't telling me." She took a deep breath. "Was he any good?"

"What?"

"You know what I mean."

"He was rubbish at snogging."

"You're just trying to make me feel better"

"No, seriously. Worse than Colin Postlethwaite." Charlize looked ready to cry. I tried to cheer her up. "But Boromir turns out to be a really nice guy. And Gimli... well, that was really unexpected. He's not old and bearded and looks like he fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. He's really hot. He looks like Kili from the film version of the Hobbit."

It took Charlize several days to recover from this revelation. But then she came up with a plan. We were going to spend the summer usefully. She was going to read the books. Even the Silmarillion. And we were going to get fit – running four times a week. And we were going to join the local archery club. Then she was going to write a serious fanfic (oxymoron, anyone?) so that we ended up avoiding lavender eyes and sapphire orbs. For good measure, I signed us up to a first aid course.

**Author's note: Do you get the feeling Sophie doesn't like my other fic? I'm gutted.**

**Thank you for all the reviews. I'm glad you're enjoying this. I've run out of ideas for parody, so might take this off in a slightly different (but hopefully still funny) direction. Hope you don't mind... But rest easy, Charlize is not going to end up marrying Legolas (see chapters 37 to 56).**


	7. Double Trouble

**Chapter 7: Double Trouble.**

**Disclaimer – do I look like an elderly professor of Anglo-Saxon to you? (I do? Damn, must go pluck my facial hair forthwith).**

**Important heads up! In the pursuit of a cheap laugh I will exploit any pairing (canon or non-canon, het or slash) that I think might prove amusing/subversive. However, in keeping with the T rating, I promise nothing explicit. But if you don't like references to wildly unlikely pairings (even in jest), you may want to duck out at this point.**

**This chapter is thanks to TommyGinger (aka "She Who is a Bad Influence") who has pointed out that this season's must-have fanfic accessory is twins (possibly displacing lost elf-maidens of uncertain parentage, though of course, the GDIME remains that eternal classic, fanfic equivalent of the little black dress). I must confess I stole Irrumator's name (Catullus's poems), but Raphanidon is all my own creation. Be warned – any attempt to follow up on the hints on the etymology of their names will up the rating of this chapter to M (and some to spare). And you will need brain bleach. (Oh, those breakfast conversations with the Classics students at college when I was an impressionable 18 year old – they scarred me for life).**

So far, the summer holiday was going well (albeit in an exhausting sort of way). Four weeks in, and Charlize was forcing both of us to stick to our running schedule. We'd actually managed two miles without a break yesterday evening. En route, we'd passed our PE teacher, who almost had a heart attack from the shock when she recognised Charlize.

The archery was going okay for Charlize. I was struggling. It was a while before one of the instructors worked out the problem.

"You're squinting down the arrow with your left eye," he said.

"Yeah, and?" I asked.

"Come here..." Several minutes later of holding my index finger at arms length and squinting at things in the difference, he came up with a diagnosis.

"You're cross-lateral – you're right handed, but your dominant eye is your left one. That's going to make things very hard. Basically, we can go with the dominant eye, and teach you to shoot left handed, or we can go with your handedness, and you can learn to shoot making sure you keep both eyes open. Both approaches work, but working with your natural handedness should make shooting faster and more fluid." I had a sudden image of orcs coming at me in a flood, and decided faster was better.

"Let's go with right handed for the moment and see if I can concentrate on using both eyes."

The next few weeks showed some improvement – I started hitting the target more often than not. Charlize meanwhile was cheerfully hitting the gold more often than not. Give that girl some motivation, and it's amazing what she can achieve.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Meanwhile we were having great fun reading fanfic, the good, the bad and the ugly. Mostly the bad and the ugly.

"Get this one," I laughed. "'Honoraria, half werewolf, half vampire, half elf...'"

"Hang on, haven't we reached one and a half people now?" asked Charlize with a grin.

"You know, your maths is really coming along... which is more than can be said for the author of this story."

"Ooh, ooh, ooh, this looks like a good one... 'Fantasmiel, the only surviving dragon spirit in Middle Earth, sought solace in Lothlauriel...' - she can't even spell!"

I couldn't resist – I chipped in with, "Says the girl who ended up on the banks of the Bruinduin."

"Oh shut up. I can't believe I was so daft back then. But I am taking all this much more seriously now," said Charlize.

"In all honesty, I'm not sure whether taking it more seriously makes you come across as more or less unhinged," I replied. I scanned down the screen of the laptop. "Oh good grief – this one's a gem – Galadriel sends Legolas to our world where he falls in love with a quantum cosmologist..." Charlize snorted as I read the plot summary.

"Hey, if Tom Cruise could fall for an astrophysicist in _Top Gun_, I don't see why that particular plot is so stupid," I said. I don't think either of us was convinced. After all, even Charlize had realised that the presence of an astrophysicist as instructor at a top pilots' school was a bit incomprehensible. She scrolled down the screen, then squealed with delight at the latest offering.

"Oh my, this one has a warning for an MPreg! Good heavens! It's a re-write of _Mamma Mia_ – Glorfindel isn't sure which one of Erestor, Elrond or Celeborn is the father of his teenage daughter. Who's in love with Legolas, of course. With a different Abba song in every chapter."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

To my intense embarrassment, my cousin discovered our guilty secret one day, when she was visiting. Unusual girl, my cousin Ruth – she's reading Classics at Oxford. A strangely brainy cuckoo in our very dull family nest of brown house sparrows, my dad always says. But she's very funny, and very quick on the uptake.

"Oh, let me see," she said with a giggle. "Hang on, one of my friends wrote one of these as a revenge against the girl who stole her boyfriend..."

"What?" Charlize and I chorused.

"Yeah, this girl was really into fanfic, at least until she discovered real men – or more specifically, my mate's bloke. So by way of revenge my mate stole this girl's Mary Jane..."

"Mary Sue," Charlize corrected.

"Whatever. And stuck her into the parody fic to end them all, complete with a couple of twin elves who'd gone over to the dark side or whatever you'd call it. Thing is, some of the real ones are so deep into unintentional self-parody a lot of her readers don't realise it's a send up. She's on 500 plus reviews already. Oh yes, here it is..."

_Death in Imladris,_ by Revenger'sTragedy. With amusement, we read the summary. "Fidrenniel is a beautiful Elleth espoused to Legolas Greenleaf [_sic_]. She is captured and brutally tortured by the dark Glorfindellion brothers, guilty offspring of an Mpreg Glorfindel perpetrated on Celeborn millennia earlier. Will Legolas manage to rescue her before she is brutally ravished? Rated M for violence against the English language."

"That's got to be the first time anyone's ever appended _sic_ to Greenleaf used as a surname," I said. We started to read.

"'Irrumator and Raphanidon, identical, ethereally beautiful, darkly brooding, yet exuding menace in the animalistic grace with which they moved through the wood, tracked their gloriously lovely but delicate prey with a feral single-mindedness...'," Charlize declaimed, in a theatrical voice.

"Blimey, she wasn't kidding about 'violence against the English language,' was she?" I chipped in.

"Raphanidon sounds reasonably Elvish, but Irrumator's all wrong," Charlize added.

Ruth grinned, and pulled a couple of dog-eared heavy black-bound volumes out of her rucksack. "Here, you have Lewis and Short, Charlize. Sophie, you've picked up enough of the Greek alphabet from actually paying attention in maths lessons – you can have Liddell and Scott." We dutifully started to thumb through.

"Oh... my... god," said Charlize. I looked over her shoulder and read the entry in the dictionary. Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say. I wasn't surprised her eyes had turned wide as saucers.

"Still, you've got to admit it's neat having two, subtly different words for the activity – allows for a nice distinction between doing it voluntarily and having it forced on you..." said Ruth, peering over Sophie's head. I winced. There's grown-up stuff I still didn't want to think about, even though my 16th birthday was due in a month. I turned to my volume.

"Rho... alpha... phi... alpha... nu... iota... delta... chuffin' Norah!" I squeaked. Charlize rushed over to where I was sitting.

"What the... How? More to the point, why? Just … why?" she blurted out, looking slightly green.

Eventually I managed to speak. "Sheds a whole new light on the phrase 'the Greeks had a word for it.'"

"The best thing is the Muriels have no idea of what the names mean," said Ruth.

"Muriels?" I asked.

"That's our name for all those girls out there writing Legomances, where they dwell on Legolas's wedding for umpteen chapters. Muriel as in _Muriel's Wedding._"

"Oh God, I ended up... I mean, I read one of those fics. The author never used the word eyes – it was all 'his sapphire orbs looked into her lavender orbs'," Charlize said.

"This stuff could drive a girl to drink. Much as it pains me to admit it, I think I might go and read a bit of hot Faramir and Éowyn smut to get the images out of my head," I said.

Ruth grinned. "Me, I prefer slash – I love a nice bit of Aragorn/Faramir."

"No, surely they wouldn't! I mean, not that there's anything wrong with being gay as such," Charlize added hastily, "but Faramir's got Éowyn and Aragorn's got Arwen." She sounded genuinely shocked at the idea of either honourable man of Gondor playing away from home. Then a puzzled look came over her face. "And in any case, I mean, if you're going to read smut, don't you want to identify with one half of the pairing."

"Well," said Ruth, with a thoughtful look, "The way I see it is this: one hot man good, two hot men, even better."

"Okay, " I said, with a sharp intake of breath. "I think that's quite enough along those lines for today. Gay, straight, I don't care, I just don't want to have to think about it in that much detail. I'm starting to feel like my parents' seven-year-old godson, the one who hides behind the sofa going 'eww they're kissing' whenever there's any hint of romance on telly. And I may never recover from my encounter with Liddell and Scott. I think I've just decided to read maths and become an accountant so as to ensure that I never encounter any images like that ever again."

"Alan Turing?" said Ruth.

"What about him?" I replied.

"Gay mathematician. I'm sure if I was actually reading maths I could name a few more..."

"Yeah, but I don't have to know about the ins and outs of his sex life to appreciate his maths."

"Ins and outs, fnarr," muttered Ruth.

"Okay, it'll have to be chemistry. I don't think chemists have sex, I think they reproduce by binary fission."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Meanwhile, Charlize had been working hard on drafting her Legomance. She was taking it very seriously, actually roughing out a draft all the way to the end to make sure the plot hung together. She'd been listing plotting and characterisation mistakes. Her top entry was what she referred to as heading at high speed down a dead end. This usually happened where an author was winging it, and hadn't bothered to rough out a plot outline upfront, only to find that they'd got the plot irredeemably stalled, but couldn't back-track to the point where things had begun to go off the rails, because they'd made the mistake of posting each chapter as it was written.

Second entry was what she called painting yourself into a corner. This usually happened in excessively angsty fics, where the characters got so immersed in misery and misunderstanding of each other's motives that there was no way the author could come up with a happy ending which seemed in any way convincing. Interestingly, the best example of this we found was 'real literature'. We'd read _Ivanhoe_ in English lessons, and come to the conclusion that the very thing that made Rebecca far and away the best character in the book – her refusal to abandon her religion in the face of threats of torture, rape and death made it impossible for Walter Scott to marry her off to the intensely devout Christian hero at the end, so he got stuck with the insipid Mary Sue instead. Much to my amusement, this seemed to have lead to the first piece of fanfic ever – we found a Victorian novelist who was so cross with Scott's ending that he wrote a sequel where the Mary Sue conveniently died, and Ivanhoe did marry Rebecca. I floated the 'first ever bit of fanfic' theory past Charlize and Ruth: Charlize (remarkably seeming to have paid attention to a school lesson for once) pointed out that Shakespeare ripped off most of his plots from elsewhere, so perhaps we could count him as an early writer of fanfic, and Ruth said she reckoned the Aeneid was just Virgil's piece of fanfic for Homer, and fanfic was therefore much, much earlier even than Shakespeare.

But Charlize seemed to have got quite immersed in the whole business. She'd read the Silmarillion, and her Lothlorien section seemed to have an interesting take on elves and the whole notion of immortality (she kept quoting Legolas's speech about the seasons passing like ripples on water when you were immortal). And she'd really thrown herself into trying to make sense of Rohan, reading books about Sutton Hoo, and Anglo-Saxon culture. She even started working her way through Beowulf, in the original, with the aid of some textbooks Ruth borrowed from a friend who'd just finished her first year of an English degree (giving the textbooks to us was apparently a reluctant alternative to the friend's preferred option of a ceremonial bonfire in the back garden to celebrate never having to struggle with Anglo-Saxon again).

"Well, I think the draft so far is pretty good," I said.

"I hope you've noticed I haven't used the word 'orbs' other than in connection with Palantirs. And I've learned my lesson. No-one has lavender, or violet, or turquoise eyes. And my descriptions of dresses are sparing."

"I'm impressed at your self-restraint," I laughed.

"I've tried to make the battle scenes convincing. I've tried to stay in character with the canon characters, and make my OCs rounded and have real personalities. And neither of us has any mysterious or magical super-powers."

"What do you mean, 'neither of us'?" I gulped.

"Didn't I tell you? You're coming too."

"Oh, err, that's nice. Do I survive the experience?"

"Of course, you nit-wit. By the way, did I ever get round to telling you what I did to Bridezilla before I escaped from the wedding-dress elven sweat shop?" Charlize asked.

"No."

"I taught her about an ancient tradition from my world, for impressing your groom and his family at the wedding feast, by dancing in front of them to demonstrate your virtue and fertility."

"Uh, Charlize, exactly what did you do?"

"I taught Suelennielwenweth about twerking."

**My apologies to any chemists out there. I would just like to record the fact that the only chemist I've ever dated did not show any preference for asexual reproduction. Also I hope any of you who have written vampire/ werewolf/ dragon spirit fics don't take this personally – the only fic I've explicitly sent up in an identifiable way is my own (and what's wrong with pairing Legolas off with a quantum cosmologist? She was a very nice cosmologist, and her discipline was sort of necessary for the plot. And I had to pair him off with someone, or the MPreg joke wouldn't have worked).**


	8. Mary Sue and Canon Too

**Chapter 8: Mary Sue and Canon Too.**

**Disclaimer. I have plucked my chin and now look nothing like Tolkien, no, really I don't. Also, apologies for the theft of the "Lost in the Lingerie Department" episode of Father Ted, and jungle warfare films too numerous to count...**

**Thanks once again to my evil muse, TG, who wants you to know that she sees me as a toddler and her role as involving encouraging me to eat too much virtual sugar then run around with virtual scissors. ****This**** is the result.**

**(Important disclaimer – I actually really like most of the fics I've read involving this character, partly because on the whole they attract damn good authors who can actually write really well, and tackle grown up stuff in a grown up way, but TG's hatred for said character is so visceral, but also so funny, it just sparked off an idea in my head which wouldn't go away. There is one fic I really didn't like, on an entirely different site from this one, and I've let it have it with both barrels! I think you'll work out which one of my parodies it is...)**

This was all Charlize's fault. Most things, in fact almost all of them, that go wrong, are Charlize's fault. Admittedly this one had at least stemmed from an interesting conversation. I could hear Charlize's voice:

"It's like Tolkien wrote this blank cheque for fan girls everywhere. He gives her a date of birth, a date for her marriage, and the name of her first child. The rest is up to us. She's like the ultimate Mary Sue, only she's canon too. And boy do the Sue-thors run with that one. She gets given all sorts of unlikely plot lines and abilities. If there's something someone in Middle Earth does, she does it better in at least one fic somewhere – wields a sword better than Éowyn, shoots a bow better than Legolas, rides better than the entire population of Rohan, heals more people than Aragorn..."

And that, my fanfic friends, is how I came to be having this particular nightmare. It was one of those nightmares you know is a nightmare, and you try to will yourself to wake up from it, but try as you might you can't.

The set-up was like a John Wayne movie. Boromir and I were holed up in a log cabin somewhere on the edge of Fangorn, surrounded by a horde of attackers. Holed up with Éomer, of all people. Well, not really 'of all people'. His presence made perfect sense when you realised what, or rather, who the attacking horde was comprised of. We were surrounded by a huge, seething melée of Lothíriels.

"I can't... I can't take any more," whimpered Éomer. "We're never getting out of here."

"We will, we will," said Boromir. "Sophie, you go on point for a moment." He turned his full attention to the wide eyed blond man in front of him. "Éomer, look at me... you expect this sort of thing when you have a kingship..."

Eomer shook his head and looked like he was about to burst into tears. "If the guys back home hear about this, I'll never get to sit on the throne again. That's if we escape at all. We're stuck here forever. Doomed. We're never getting out of here."

Boromir pulled him into a brotherly embrace. "Sure we are. I promise you, one day all this will be just a memory. We'll be sitting on the lawn outside Edoras sipping iced tea."

"Ow," I yelped. "Something just sailed through the window and pinged me in the eye." I picked the missile off the floor. "Oh my god, it's a genuine ye-olde-worlde medieval bra. You know, the sort I didn't think existed back in chapter 1 because my bloody author hadn't bothered to do her research properly [_see author's note in chapter 2_]."

Éomer managed to pull himself together, and crept over to the wall beside the window, cautiously peering out from behind the gaily checked red and white curtain. (Yes, the cabin was a bit 'Calamity Jane' – my subconscious was really on a roll with this dream). We'd made some inroads into dealing with our attackers. The key seemed to be launching the antidote to their particular Mary-Sue superpower. For instance, there was a whole batch of beguilingly gamine, sparky and sassy tomboy Lothíriels. We'd dealt with them using pink glitter bombs. They'd shrivelled up under the onslaught of barbie-doll ersatz femininity. It was like colliding matter and anti-matter. Legolas's quantum-cosmologist-Sue would have been proud of us.

I'd worked out how to deal with the herb-lore/natural history buff Lothíriels. A mixture of articles from _Pub Med Sci _on which herbal remedies had some basis in science and which relied wholly on the placebo effect, wrapped round a copy of Darwin's _Origin of the Species_ to give the missile a bit of weight, then launched from an improvised catapult, had sent them wandering off across the surrounding grassland, engrossed in their reading material.

The scariest Lothíriel (and fortunately, there was only one of her) had wandered in from another fan site entirely. Whatever dark satanic imagination had created her had decided to really emphasise her elven heritage (and go with that strange subculture in fandom which holds that all elves, not just Galadriel, are capable of telepathy). She'd called out a detailed description of how her whole family knew about her and Éomer's affair, and how he'd dishonoured her and was now honour-bound to marry her. Apparently there had been some unfortunate incident where she had communicated not just her heady rush of emotions, but the intense physical sensations which had occasioned the emotions, in one messy, ill-controlled telepathic burst to the whole of her immediate family. Well, all except her cousin, who, by a convenient coincidence, had been so distracted at precisely the same moment trying to produce similar heights of emotion and physical sensation in Éomer's sister that he hadn't noticed what Lothíriel had been up to.

"My poor cousins. Valar, a chap doesn't want to know that about his sister," said Boromir, thinking of the unfortunate trio of Elphir, Amrothos and Erchirion.

"He certainly doesn't," said Éomer, weighing his dagger in his hand. "Where did you say I might find this brother of yours? Ithilien, wasn't it?" he added, darkly, looking accusingly at Boromir, almost as though the elder of the two brothers were somehow complicit in the situation.

"Calm down Éomer, they're going to get married," I said. This did not meet with approval from either of my companions.

"It's just not fair. I met her first," growled Boromir.

"I don't care, married, not married, he's still keeping it in his trousers, she's still my little sister after all," Éomer shouted.

"Look, Éomer, they end up having a kid. Do you think the stork brought him?" I asked angrily.

"Where my sister is concerned, yes, that's precisely what I will choose to believe."

Meanwhile, Boromir continued to whinge quietly. "Not fair, not fair..."

"BOTH OF YOU, JUST GET A GRIP," I yelled. "While you two are getting your knickers in a twist about Faramir and Éowyn, the Lothíriel from hell, yes, she of the mind-meld that lets her rellies know things no-one in their right mind wants to know, that Lothíriel, is getting closer and closer to this cabin. And she appears to be glowing with telepathic energy..."

"Well, what the hell do you suggest we do about it?" said Boromir, testily.

"Hold hands and repeat after me..." So we did, and stood in a circle chanting "I DON'T BELIEVE IN FAIRIES..." Gradually, the Lothíriel's glow faded, then she herself faded and disappeared with a faint pop. There was a brief accompanying sound, as if from a ticking alarm clock, then that too faded.

So, tomboys, natural historians and the telepathic exhibitionist Lothíriel all dealt with, we assessed what was left of our opponents. Some were mounted on horseback, though a few of those had come under the heading of gamine-tomboy and been dealt with by the glitter bomb. Others wore the familiar, nun-like garb of assistants in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith ("I think I snogged that one in a cupboard," said Éomer, unhelpfully. "Actually, that one too – sluice room.") Some were dressed as ragamuffins (the ones who were going for the 'mistaken identity, I'm not going to admit I'm the Princess of Dol Amroth' plot line). Several (the 'I don't want an arranged marriage and will go to any lengths to put him off' faction) were dressed in ridiculous frilly dresses in garish colours. One (who had been stolen from the bosom of her family at an early age by corsairs and trained as an assassin) was decked out as a Haradrim dancing girl. I got the distinct, and worrying, feeling that Éomer actually quite liked that one.

Then things got really weird. A second Haradrim dancing girl, in baggy harem pants, with vivid blue, kohl-lined eyes peeping from over the veil across her face, walked over the grass towards us. Actually, 'walked' is entirely the wrong word. She undulated sinuously. Funnily enough, unlike the other Lothíriels with their midnight tresses down to their waists (apart from the ragamuffin ones who'd given themselves haircuts with their brother's dagger and now had fetching Audrey Hepburn/ kd Lang crops – how they achieved this with a dagger is anyone's guess), this one had shoulder length light brown hair. Then the veil slipped to reveal a short beard and very masculine jawline.

"Oh shit," said Éomer.

A soft whinny came from beneath the window. A whinny that sounded strangely like "Ho boy, aw-kward!" Strangely enough, Firefoot appeared to be being voiced by Owen Wilson.

"Éomer, oh Éomer! It's me, your Hephaistion. Who are all these dark haired houris?"

"Hephaistion?" asked Boromir, lifting an eyebrow.

"Look, 99% of the stuff I do is het, with Lothíriel, but once in a while someone writes something a bit more...outré. And sometimes they're cross-overs, okay. Look, doesn't mean I'm gay, right?"

"Definitely bi though," I said.

At this point all hell broke loose outside. The Lothíriels attacked Hephaistion, who fortunately was well up to the task of defending himself, having fought his way across half of Asia Minor with Alexander. So then the dark haired host turned on itself and started attacking each other. I was hit by another undergarment which came sailing through the window. As I tried to struggle out from beneath the folds of fabric, they morphed into the familiar pattern of my duvet cover, and I realised I'd finally managed to wake up.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ruth and Charlize thought my dream was absolutely hilarious.

"Hephaistion... I've read that fic. It's one of the funniest things I've ever read. Absolute bloody comic genius. Did your Firefoot sound like Owen Wilson?" Ruth asked.

"How did you know?" I asked in reply.

"Funny, when I read it, he sounded like Eddie Izzard," said Charlize.

**Sorry it's a short chapter, but it just seemed like such a fun idea! I'd just like to re-iterate that some of my favourite fics are actually Éomer and Lothíriel fics. And also with tens of thousands of fics on this site, it's inevitable that the same ideas get done over and over again; I don't think I've ever seen plagiarism, just subconsciously thinking along the same lines. And the key issue is not "is your idea for a fic new?" (I can almost guarantee it won't be – there's a theory that there are only 7 plot types in the whole of literature), but "are you doing it well?" I make no apology for dissing the telepathic Lothíriel fic – it was toe-curlingly awful. **


End file.
